


New World

by samusisagirl



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, Implied Death, Post Trespasser, Sort of a sequel to May The Dread Wolf Take You?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 20:26:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14961602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samusisagirl/pseuds/samusisagirl
Summary: Lavellan faces Solas at the end and finds she cannot bring herself to stop him





	New World

She takes the steps two at a time, sometimes three, and before she is prepared to face him, she is at the top and there he is, closer and more real than he has been in years. His back is to her, hands clasped behind him as if he had been expecting this all along.

The sight of him hurts her. Solas. Fen’harel. The Dread Wolf in the form of a man, looking less like a trickster god and more like a lonely scholar, even in his ancient armor. 

He turns. 

That gold and silver armor is streaked with soot and blood just like her own, and she stands before him, her staff at her side ready to cast the spell that would strike him down and end this, once and for all. And he stands before her, waiting for her to do it. She knows he won’t fight back. He will let her kill him.

“Vhenan.” His voice is hoarse and barely audible above the din of the battle below. Is it a greeting? A plea? An admonishment? 

She meets his eyes, blue gray and bright, almost like they are burning. 

Her hand won’t obey her. Her staff remains lowered. The power thrums at her fingertips, ready to fly true and strike him down, but she cannot do it.

“I am dead either way,” he says. 

Does he really want her to kill him? Stop him before he can destroy the world? She swallows, and her throat tightens. Her tongue is too thick in her mouth. 

“You can still end this. Surrender. It’s not too late.” She drops her staff and it hits the stone steps of the temple with a crack. Her eyes sting from black smoke and her swallowed tears. She holds out her hand to him.

But even as she says the words, she knows they are a lie. 

“I am dead either way,” he repeats. Even if he came quietly, the Inquisition would put him in chains—useless against a god—but he would let them. He would let them put him on trial. And he would let them put him to death. 

And she would have to speak the sentence, sitting on that ridiculous throne in a castle that sits on the ruins of a temple that was once was his. A castle he gifted her. The thought rips her heart in two, whatever is left of it. 

“Then come with me. Now. We’ll run away. Far into the Arbor Wilds. Or across the Amaranthine Ocean if we have to.” She doesn’t even try to hide the shaking in her voice, the desperation. The panic.

Solas only smiles sadly. “It is a lovely dream, but where can two gods flee?”

“I’m not—” she starts, but he looks at her with such a knowing and ancient look.

“I once said much the same thing.”

Will the Herald of Andraste be called a god one day? Did Andraste herself once wonder too?

And now she is out of options. She has only one path open to her, for she cannot be the one to kill him, whether by hand or judgement. And she will never be called a god. 

“Do it.” Her voice is barely a whisper. 

“Vhenan?” He is surprised, and she is perversely pleased to have surprised him.

“Do it,” she says again, louder, more assured. “Let this world be nothing more than a nightmare. Give the elvhen people a chance to start again.”

He closes the space between them and cups her face in his hands. He wipes the tears away from her cheeks with his thumbs before she realizes she is crying. “Are you certain?” he asks, as if he needed her permission all long.

“I never really believed in the gods,” she says. She gently places her hands over his. “Then I met one.”

He brings his face closer, lips dangerously close to her own. He breathes her name as his eyes flutter closed. 

“I believe in you.”

He kisses her, slowly at first, then with a hunger that threatens to devour her whole. He pulls away after what seems like a second and an eternity all at once.

“We are running out of time,” he says. He has spoken those words to her before.

She nods, and he moves to finish what he has been working for since the moment he awoke in this strange, dark world.

What will the new one look like, she wonders. Will the Elvhen make the same mistakes that brought them here in the first place? Will someone else take Solas’ place in the myths and create a Veil of their own? She is comforted and frightened by the knowledge she will never know. And neither will he. This will kill him, and he will not see the future he is sacrificing himself for. He can only hope that without him, the People will not fall.

He steps back, the final piece set in motion. It is too late to stop this now. He looks to her.

“Will you—” He closes his eyes, the words catching in his throat. As if saying them is the hardest thing he has ever done.

She approaches, and he brushes the top of her hand with his fingertips.

“Will you stay with me?” he says finally. His face is raw and open. He cannot meet her eyes.

She remembers what was carved into his tombstone in the Fade, in that small glimpse into a future should she have failed to stop Corypheus. His greatest fear has always been dying alone. And maybe, after this, the People will never be alone again.

“Until the end,” she says, “and after, if such a place exists.”

“Let us find out.”

**Author's Note:**

> If I'm not given the option to destroy the world, I'll riot.


End file.
